TRAVELLING BY TRUCK TO LEH, LADAKH | LETTERS & PICTURES FROM ASIA, 1988 | PART 10

In 1988, when I was eighteen years old I set off from New Zealand to Asia on an adventure. Accompanying me was my high school friend David. We were inspired by Tintin comics and National Geographic magazines. Although we had never actually been overseas before, we wanted begin our travels somewhere more exotic than the usual teenage Kiwi destinations. Our plans were vague - first Nepal, then India - then, after that, as far as our meagre holiday savings would take us. Once on the road, I wrote detailed and mostly illegible aerogrammes home, which my father kindly typed up to make readable for the rest of the family. My father also generously lent me his Pentax Spotmatic camera to ensure I got some good pictures. 

This is the tenth letter, sent from the Himalayan region of Leh in Ladakh. Read the very first letter from Kathmandu here.

13 June 1988

Dear Everyone,

After four days adventure we have finally arrived here in Leh. Ladakh is so barren and really is an incredible place. We are staying in Leh at the moment; when I say "We" I mean one of the Dutch guys that I trekked with, an English guy and a New Zealand girl.

Leh is much smaller than I expected and it only takes about 5 minutes to walk from one side to the other. The huge Leh Palace and Gompa tower over the whole town looking a bit like a small version of the Potala in Lhasa. It's all really dry and dusty; someone said that it is a bit like Egypt. From the palace you can see all down the Indus valley, out over the city. The old part of the town is a maze of flat-roofed mud buildings, - and it honestly is a maze, we got quite lost!

In the gompa, which is perched further up the same hill as the palace, here is a huge statue of the god Chamba. I didn't know about it until we went into the large chamber and saw these two huge feet, then looked up and there was this 10 metre statue; honestly, I just about fell over backwards when I saw it. These huge eyes stared down at me and the whole effect of the statue was somewhat scary. There were many other dark rooms filled with religious objects, etc.

The town has one main street which leads up to the base of the palace. There are lots of shops selling Tibetan clothing, jewellery and all sorts of things. On the east side of town there is the old city which is fascinating to wander around and get lost in. Unfortunately there is a large military base further down the valley, with an airfield. This morning there were a lot of noisy jet fighters flying around.

I met the Dutch guy when I was going to buy tickets up to Sonmarg, the town below the pass. He was going over too so we joined up and caught the bus the next day. The ride took about 4 hous driving through green fields of rice paddy with colorfully-dressed people harvesting. They all sing while they work; one person leads, then the others follow. For each job they have a different song.

Sonmarg is a somewhat uninteresting place, mostly set up for Indian tourists. The way to get from here to the pass is to walk up the road past the military checkpoint and try to hitch a ride with a truck. They are not allowed to pick you up so that is why you have to go past the check post first .

At about 7.30am we got a lift on a military truck taking workers up to work on the road at the pass. It was completely full and I couldn't get in, so I was hanging on to the back right-hand corner of the truck and if I looked at my feet all I could see was a two hundred foot drop down into the ravine! It was quite scary and what made it worse was my pack strap was only on one shoulder so that it was nearly pulling my arm off!

The next thing that happened was that some guy poked his head through the crowds and asked for 5 rupees fare. After various acrobatics I managed to produce the truck fare. This is no exaggeration; it was a very precarious situation.

The road bounced and curved its way up to the pass. Half way up some people got out so I found room sitting on a box in the truck; later we found out that it was dynamite!

Finally we arrived at the pass. The snow was cleared on the road itself but was piled up about 10 metres on each side. The reason that there were no buses over the pass yet was because they were still in the process of repairing all the damage done over the winter. It took about an hour to get across in the truck.

On the other side there was just a small military station and they told us that we wouldn't be able to get a lift and that we would have to walk to the next village, which was about 16km away.

A lift did come after about half an hour, which was a surprise in this barren desolate land. The army jeep took us to a village where someone told us that we could get a lift with an army truck at 5pm. The village was two houses in the middle of nowhere. By this time it was 3pm and we were all starving having not eaten all day, so I decided to brew up a meal on my new cooker. Whilst in the middle of cooking the meal the truck turned up an hour and a half early and so I had to throw my rice, cooker and everything on to the back. It was real chaos, but the soldiers didn't mind; in India things like this always happen.

The truck was going to take us all the way to Drass, the place we were aiming tor, but three kilometres short of there there was a police checkpoint. We all had to hide as best as we could under blankets and things. Unfortunately they got suspicious for some reason, and after a few tense minutes they found us out. We had to get out of the truck, but this was OK as we had only three kilometres to go. The officer then actually invited us all in for tea and boiled eggs and was very friendly! I think that he only told us to get off because he wanted a chat. Actually, the army is usually really good and helpful. After the tea he arranged for a jeep to take us the last short distance.

Drass turned out to be a cold, small village. The next morning we had no problem fighting our way on to a truck, and squatted on the back with a hundred other locals for four hours to Kargil. Kargil is like a crossroads between Kashmir, Ladakh, Balthistan and Zanskar. It's just like a Wild West town with a great mixture of people; but apart from that there is not a hell of a lot to do.

The twelve hour bus trip the next day was really interesting as we were going into real Ladakh country now. It is so barren and dry; the landscape is like in the movie "Dune" or in the Wild West. It even looks like pictures you see of Mars. The bus stopped for breakfast at a village with a huge carving in a rock, again of the god Chamba, who is the coming Buddha. It is said to date from around the time of the birth of Christ.

We passed the amazing monastery of Lamayuru, and then wound around the edge of an incredible canyon with red, yellow, grey, purple, blue and orange rock; it was about a thousand metres from the road down to the tiny river at the bottom. We passed a number of other villages and monasteries. What is most amazing about this is the way that there is always a patch of bright green fields and trees contrasting the orange barren-ness. Obviously irrigation is very important.

At sunset, which was red over the mountains, we arrived in Leh. It is always a strange feeling to arrive at a poace that you have read so much about. Now we are staying in a small guest house with a fantastic kitchen and a TV(!). I watched one for the first time since leaving home; unfortunately I couldn't understand any of it because it was in Hindi.

I leave to go trekking on the 15th and hope to arrive at the Hemis festival on the 23rd. This lasts until the 25th. Then I will take three more days to walk back to Leh. After spending some time there I will walk back along the road to Kargil stopping at the many gompas and villages. When I get about half way and there are less people I will get a bus on to Kargil. From there I will walk, or perhaps truck some of the way if possible, down the Zanskar Valley to Manali, arriving about the 25th July. So this will be a journey on foot through Ladakh. I would like to do most of it alone and just live with the local people, getting right into their culture. It's not that I am trying to prove anything, and it may turn out to be too much, but I just want to do it this way. I'm sure that it's not dangerous because all ttie places that I am going to are fairly well-populated, so there is no chance of any problems with the people. Of course I will have to take plenty of food, but I've been told that accomodation is no problem. The English guy and the NZ girl are both going trekking too, but I'm not sure I want to join them trekking.

I have been told by the Dutch guy that there was rioting in Srinagar recently because the Kashmir is have to pay more tax. This shows how reluctant they are to part with money. It looks like we escaped just in time.

Tomorrow I will spend getting ready to go trekking, and then I will leave the next day, the 15th. I have a bit of a cold at the moment so I hope that it is better before I leave. The temperature here is generally pretty good and it is not really cold at night.

I have bought an OK map; although it is not great it is the best that you can get. I also have a compass but my clock has broken so I will only know the time by the sun. The next letter that I write will be when I return to Leh, so you might not hear from me for a while. The festival finishes on the 25th so I will write again at the end of the month when I am back here.

The longer that I travel the more that I think of home. I have made some good friends here, but I also get sick of all the traveller's tales. Like Eve said, you hear all about "When I crossed the Sahara with only a bag of grapefruit" all the time. Actually I met one Danish guy who really did rollerskate all round Europe. That was interesting. But, despite all this, there are some interesting people about.